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Heroes that looked anything like me were hard to come by when I was a kid growing up in Harlem. I remember Sugar Ray Robinson, then the welterweight champion, stopping his flashy Cadillac on our block and sparring with me and the other kids. All the kids on the block loved his playing with us, even the girls. Once in a while I would spot heavyweight champ Joe Louis on 125th Street near the Apollo Theater in New York City and that was always a thrill. But Robinson and Louis were relatively simple men, their brilliance limited to their exploits in the ring. Another Robinson, Jackie, had just integrated major league baseball and became, for me, the most exciting male figure in the African-American community until the Summer Olympics of 1960.That summer, a young man would stand on the podium, a gold medal around his neck, while the “Star Spangled Banner” played. A caption on the television I watched announced that Cassius Clay had won the gold medal in boxing. It was the first glimpse for most Americans of the man who would come to be known as The Greatest.
